Drummond on fluoridation
Joshua Drummond writes in the Waikato Times:
Really, Hamilton City Council? Seriously? I can’t believe you’ve done this. I never expected it to happen. You’ve got me agreeing wholeheartedly with Judith Collins.
This hell-freezing-over moment happened when Collins referred to HCC’s decision to remove fluoride from Hamilton’s water supply as “bollocks,” and “absolutely gutless.”
I couldn’t agree more, although I’ve frequently used choicer words to describe the decision over the last couple of days – the most print-friendly of which are “utter cowardice” and “witless imbecility.”
A pity the full terms can’t be used in the web version!
Where to start with this one? Let’s begin at the top, with Mayor Julie Hardaker’s statement responding to Collins’ invective.
“My council and I have sat through four days of what I would regard as a very, very good process, listening to and receiving info, evidence, data, statistics, expert advice from both sides of this debate.”
Um, no. No you didn’t. You willfully set aside actual expert opinion and the weight of evidence, instead listening to a mixture of cranks, otherwise credible people with a crank bone, and crazies. It’s the equivalent of a local body deciding whether climate change or evolution exists or not. (Both do, just to annoy the cranks out there.)
When someone mentions hearing from “both sides of the debate” in this situation, it speaks volumes. There aren’t two sides to this debate – there is a weight of evidence favouring fluoridation, and mostly fringe evidence against it. Let’s say, for a given issue, evidence is 95 percent in favour and 5 percent against. You don’t then convene a tribunal where you hear submissions in a 50:50 ratio of for and against.
That is a key point. I recall a stats blog post recently where someone said that submissions are for reading, not counting.
Never mind that the scales were tipped against fluoridation from the start – a fact that was boasted about by the anti lobby. Spearheading the local effort was Pat McNair, head of the Fluoride Free Hamilton campaign.
You may know her from the letters page of every newspaper in a 500 kilometre radius. Speaking in the Waikato Times before the tribunal, she crowed that “more than 130 people from all walks of life would be speaking at the hearings” of which “only 11 people have been confirmed to speak in favour of fluoride.”
Well, you’d think that if numbers were the issue, that the 2006 referendum in which 70 percent of voters were in favour of fluoridation would have settled it. But numbers ultimately shouldn’t matter here. Evidence should.
Exactly.
Anyway, you’ll be pleased to know that now she’s won a hopefully temporary victory over the humble fluoride ion, Pat McNair shouldn’t lack for things to do. She’s a stalwart of the local effort to complain about chemtrails.
If you haven’t had the pleasure of reading up on the matter, let me enlighten you: the chemtrails conspiracy theory is basically that we’re being doped and/or geoengineered – the literature is not quite clear on which – by secret aircraft that leave tell-tale “chemtrails” behind.
I hope it’s not necessary to spell out that chemtrails are complete bollocks, with (as is usual with conspiracy theories,) a very small nugget of truth at their centre. The things the conspiracy theorists point out as chemtrails are generally contrails – which have been around about as long as there have been aircraft – or clouds.
Well, here’s Pat McNair on the matter recently, on the ever-informative Northland New Zealand Chemtrails Watch website:
“The day started out with fluffy white clouds, but they soon disappeared and were replaced by stripy, stretched-out examples of the very thing we were there to protest. Thanks everyone! It was fun!”
Congratulations, Hamilton City Council. You have kowtowed to people who protest about clouds.
So well said.